The Jury

The trial and sentence, then, were wholly in the hands of the jury.

Otherwise there is no sense in the phrase per judicium parium suorum.

We also know that, in case of conviction, the sentence of the jury was not necessarily final;

Extracts and abstracts are protected if in the opinion of the jury they were published bona fide and without malice.

The right is to publish such comment as in the opinion of impartial bystanders, as represented by the jury, may fairly arise out of the matter in hand.

The result is that the power of the Court to withhold a case from the jury on the ground of a total want of evidence has on this point been carried very far.

Some of you yourselves have in fact repented before now of having sent men to their death;

Acquit me, then, today and at the trial for murder the prosecution shall take the traditional oath before accusing me:

Once you condemn me, I must perforce obey your verdict and the law, even if I am not the murderer or concerned in the crime.

and secondly, because I am both young and without experience, so that I must count myself fortunate if, because your goodwill is at hand to help me, I shall be able to show what this fellow has done;

The honorable course for you, men of the jury, is, not to put the laws or your own selves in the power of those who speak, but to keep the speakers in your power, and to make a distinction between those who speak well and lucidly, and those who speak what is just;

Inasmuch as my father, men of the jury, through this man Theocrines was brought to disaster in his relations to the state and condemned to pay a fine of ten talents, and as this fine has been doubled, so that we have not the slightest hope of deliverance, I have thought it my duty to lodge this criminal information with a view to taking vengeance upon the defendant with your aid, without taking in …

Is not the suit one in which the penalty is for the jury to determine?

Furthermore, a juror who so acts will go out from the court-room responsible for having made himself weak and the politician strong.

Cast your vote, then, not only as men who are rendering a verdict, but also as men who are in the public eye, to be called to account by the citizens who, though they are not now present, will nevertheless ask you what your verdict was.

But I commend you exceedingly, gentlemen of the jury, that in silence and with fairness you are listening to us.

I beg you, fellow citizens, to hear me with willing and friendly mind, remembering how great is my peril, and how many the charges against which I have to defend myself;

Now, fellow citizens, as regards the rest of his accusations, if I pass over any point and fail to mention it, I beg of you to question me and let me know what it is that you wish to hear about, and to refrain from forming any judgment in advance, but to listen with impartial goodwill.

You must plead with yourselves for my life, and save it.

So do not deprive yourselves of what you can reasonably expect from me, and do not deprive me of what I can reasonably expect from you.

it is for you to weigh the matter and give a just decision.

Not only am I still too young to know anything of courts of law, gentlemen;

and it is in order that judgement may come upon wrongdoers for their misdeeds that you are yourselves constituted and called judges.

but if you acquit him, you become liable to them.

and I, like my opponents, gentlemen of the jury, seek refuge in your sympathy.

But should matter for dispute occur, it is your task, gentlemen, to give a decision.

Do you now give a just decision in accordance with the laws.

I, men of the jury, have by now been for a long time engaged in foreign trade, and up to a certain time risked the sea in my own person;

The law, men of Athens, ordains that actions for merchants and shipowners shall be before the Thesmothetae if they have been in any way wronged in the market either in connection with a voyage from Athens to any point, or from some other port to Athens;

I beg of you, men of the jury, to give me a favorable hearing, and, if you judge that I have been wronged, to render me the aid which is my due.

If Aphobus, men of the jury, had been willing to do what is fair, or to submit the matters in dispute between us to the arbitration of friends, there would be no occasion for a troublesome lawsuit;

I beg you, therefore, men of the jury, I entreat, I implore you, to remember the laws and the oaths which you took as jurors, to render me the aid that is my due, and not to count the pleas of this man of higher worth than mine.

and then cast your vote on the side of justice.

Do not, men of the jury, be to us the cause of such deep distress;

he will conceal it rather, that it may appear that he was justly acquitted.

But one request I make of you, men of the jury, and it is a reasonable one—that you will give us both a fair hearing.

The jury, to whom he then appealed, having heard the case, gave the same decision that his own friends and the arbitrator had given, and fixed the damages at ten talents.

As it is, however (be it said with the favor of heaven), if you prove fair and impartial hearers, I have strong hopes that you will become as fully aware of the shamelessness of this man as were the jurors in the former trial.

I am a sharer in this loan, men of the jury.

We rely upon you, men of the jury, and upon your laws, which ordain that all agreements into which a man voluntarily enters with another shall be valid.

Do not permit this, men of the jury, for it is not to the interest of the mass of your people any more than of those engaged in trade, who are a body of men most useful to your public at large and to the individuals who have dealings with them.

Since Eubulides has brought many false charges against me, and has uttered slanders which are neither becoming nor just, I shall try, men of the jury, to prove by a true and fair statement that I am entitled to citizenship, and that I have been unworthily treated by this fellow.

As it is, however, because you thought that something of this sort might occur through rivalry and malice and enmity or through some other pretexts, you made your court a place of refuge for those who have been wronged, and through this right action on your part, men of Athens, you have saved all those who have suffered wrong.

but hold fast to what you are convinced is just, and bear it in mind until you vote, so that true to your oaths you may cast your votes against the counsels of the wicked.

If you yield to the nobler impulse and cast your votes with us, you will win for yourselves the credit, and for the State the benefit, of a righteous verdict, and if ever occasion arises, you will not lack friends willing to encounter risk in your behalf.

For it is known to all standing round us, as to everyone else, that in this court Leptines is contending with us, but within the conscience of each member of the jury humanity is arrayed against envy, justice against malice, and all that is good against all that is most base.

and very properly, men of the jury.

I know well, men of the jury, that I have to contend against arguments craftily prepared, and against witnesses who are going to give false testimony;

I should have been most glad, men of the jury, had the difference which I have had with Aphobus, and also that in which I am now involved with this man Onetor, his brother-in-law, not come about.

For the fellow, men of the jury, when he first determined to lay claim to the property of Aphobus, declared that he had paid as the marriage-portion, not a talent, as he now alleges, but eighty minae;

Again, this language of yours is absurd, as though you, men of the jury, did not know that all those who commit frauds of this sort determine what they are going to say, and that no one ever lost a suit through keeping quiet, or admitting that he was in the wrong;

It is plain, then, that Onetor having put up pillars on the house for two thousand drachmae, and on the land for a talent, intended to push his claim as though he had paid eighty minae. Could you have stronger proof that there is not a word of truth in what he now says, than the fact that his present story is different from the one he told at first about the same matters? To me it seems that no st …

Nay, men of the jury, I beg you, do not do this.

The laws, however, in accordance with which you sit as jurors, do not use this language.

And I beg you, men of Athens, to consider what is admitted by these men, and what is disputed;

Men of the jury, having entered a plea that the action is not admissible, I wish first to speak concerning the laws in accordance with which the plea was entered.

Then the man, whom no one would have thought audacious enough to come here, after having plotted and wrought such deeds—this man, Athenians, has so surpassed all in shamelessness and audacity, that he has not only come, but has actually laid claim to my grain, and has brought suit against me!

At the same time (for, men of Athens, the whole truth shall be told you), we on our part, who had made the loan, came to a quarrel and felt bitter against him (for the loss on the grain was falling on us), and charged that he had secured for us this pettifogging scoundrel instead of our money.

Many indeed are the reasons, men of Athens, which urged me to prefer this indictment against Neaera, and to come before you.

It is, therefore, upon the one who by his arguments deceived the jurors that your wrath should fall, not upon those who were deceived.

I make of you, therefore, men of the jury, a request which seems to me a proper one for a young man and one without experience in speaking—that you will permit me to call Apollodorus as advocate to assist me in this trial.

You give full permission, gentlemen of the jury, to the orators and generals to reap substantial rewards.

for it would be a shameful thing, gentlemen of the jury, to jeopardize the safety of the city because of charges brought against individual men.

Is he unaffected by the people’s decrees, which you have sworn to observe in voting, decrees which were proposed, not by any of his enemies, but by Demosthenes himself, and which the people carried on his motion, almost as though he deliberately sought to destroy himself and yet the just verdict, gentlemen of the jury, is, as I see it, simple:

Why should you spare this man, gentlemen?

I have a few more points to make, gentlemen of the jury, and after summing up my argument will leave the platform.

When about to go to the ballot, gentlemen of the jury, tell the clerk to read you the impeachment, the impeachment law and the oath sworn by jurymen.

Personally, gentlemen of the jury, as I was just saying to those seated beside me, I am surprised that you are not tired by now of this kind of impeachment.

You do not realize, Polyeuctus, it seems to me, you and those who share your views, that there is not in the world a single democracy or monarch or race more magnanimous than the Athenian people, and that it does not forsake those citizens who are maligned by others, whether singly or in numbers, but supports them.